Many semiconductor devices such as processors, chipsets, and so forth often go through extensive testing after manufacture to verify performance levels and prevent devices likely to fail from being shipped. To perform high volume manufacturing (HVM) testing, so-called burn-in boards are used which include a number of burn-in sockets in which completed semiconductor devices can be inserted to perform the burn-in testing. During burn-in testing, oftentimes an external thermal control unit is coupled to the burn-in board to heat the burn-in board and thus the associated semiconductor devices to a high temperature for the burn-in testing process. However, such external thermal control units require complex mechanical engagement systems and critical alignment. Furthermore, the heaters of such a unit have a fixed matrix that causes the burn-in socket density on the burn-in board to be non-configurable.
Furthermore, while such burn-in boards have been developed for testing high power devices, current semiconductor trends are to provide semiconductor devices that operate at lower power levels such as low power microprocessors, ultra mobile personal computer (UMPC) devices, network communication devices and so forth. Burn-in systems developed for high power systems are costly and are used to support burn-in of power devices greater than approximately 200 Watts. In contrast, lower power products typically have power requirements less than 100 Watts and often less than 30 Watts. It is difficult to perform burn-in of low power products on high power systems. For example, to test low power devices on a high power system, a longer burn-in time is needed, as typically a thermal control system may not be available for testing such low power devices.